There are varying and changing views about what counts as scientific thinking and practices. In their major review of scientific thinking research, Lehrer and Schauble (2015) argue that the current focus on science-as-practice, which became the basis for the policy document NGSS (2013), best captures the disciplinary practices of scientists and frames the most promising approach to policy in science education.
Traditional approaches, often focusing on science as conceptual change (Lehrer &
Schauble,2015) focus on science as facts to be learned or processes (e.g., the scientific method) to be mastered. Similar to our analysis of mathematical examples, we use two science examples to illustrate our three recommendations: noticing students’
strengths, recognizing science practices in student contributions, and expanding what counts as science practices. In particular, we focus on science practices emphasized by the NGSS (2013), including asking questions, analyzing and interpreting data, and arguing with evidence, as well as NGSS cross-cutting themes, specifically systemic thinking. These practices and themes overlap with scientists’ disciplinary practices and are central to policy recommendations for classroom science instruction. We show that these practices and cross-cutting themes also reflect everyday cultural reasoning practices used by students from particular multilingual and non-dominant communities.
4.1 Science Example 1: Noticing Cultural Practices
as Strengths, Recognizing Arguing as a Science Practice, and Expanding Science Practices
Unless policy makers and educators notice the strengths of children from marginal- ized communities, they may see them as underperforming. Hudicourt-Barnes (2003) rejects the idea that children from different communities should give identical responses when asked the same question. This expectation has led some researchers to paint a negative picture of the scientific abilities of Haitian immigrant students in the United States (Lee & Fradd,1996; Lee et al.,1995), claiming that Haitian chil- dren’s classroom strategies were inconsistent with the norms of science discourse. In contrast, Hudicourt-Barnes’ work (2003) illustrates how to notice learners’ strengths for learning, documenting Haitian children’s classroom participation in sophisticated conversations about scientific phenomena using a conversational practice common in Haitian communities.
Haitian culture emphasizes spoken language for entertainment as well as commu- nication. Adults and children participate in the social practice of bay odyansor lodyans which involves animated and entertaining interactions about a range of topics. These conversations take various forms, such as storytelling, reminiscing about previous experiences, and arguments (also calleddiskisyonor discussion) and occur in public settings, involving all members of the community (Hudicourt-Barnes, 2003). Usually, one person makes a claim and calmly defends it as one or more challengers question the claim, bring evidence, and engage the larger group. Other members of the group join in with laughter, approval, and other reactions. The goal is to entertain, but also to find the truth through argumentation.
Hudicourt-Barnes (2003) identified the social practice of bay odyans as a strength of Haitian students and recognized how it reflects argumentation using evidence in classroom science lessons, a key science practice. According to the NGSS, “As chil- dren move through the higher grades, they should participate more directly in compar- ison and critique of conflicting claims, including weighing respective strengths and weaknesses” (Lehrer & Schauble,2015, p. 31).
In one observation of a group of Haitian students from a Grade 5/6 class- room (10 and 11 years old), students were documented expressing their arguments, evidence, and questions in a discussion about where mold would and would not grow (Hudicourt-Barnes,2003). Children were asked to reflect on their life experiences, their previous learning, and their observations of mold growing on slices of bread in their classroom to inform their arguments. One child made a claim that mold grew easily in bathrooms. This prompted other children to engage with the idea, taking turns to provide evidence and questioning. Multiple children voiced their arguments and took on the role of challenger while the teacher acted as moderator, encouraging students to defend their positions. This example shows children providing explana- tions and evidence to support their perspectives by challenging one another using a familiar conversational pattern that is a strength for learning science. The example
also provides evidence of their participation in the scientific practice of engaging with arguments using evidence (Hudicourt-Barnes,2003).
In contrast with the question and known-answer format of traditional westernized classroom practices, the teacher from this classroom provided space for children to explore ideas using argumentation skills they developed in the practice of bay odyans (Hudicourt-Barnes,2003). Because the teacher was aware of this cultural practice, they expanded what counts as a STEM practice beyond traditional expectations.
This and intentional facilitation of a classroom discussion allowed children to engage more fully in the scientific practices than if they had followed westernized classroom dynamics (Hudicourt-Barnes,2003). The student discussions included laughter and interjections, important elements in the practice of bay odyans. If the teacher in this classroom had held to a more rigid view of science practices, the rich student conversations may have been viewed as non-academic and shut down. The strengths children showed in the classroom discussion about mold mirror the authentic science practices of scientists and these practices need to be recognized in student discussions.
When teachers provided opportunities for children to engage in bay odyans and employ their existing culturally relevant conversational practices during a science lesson, they were able to notice students’ strengths (Hudicourt-Barnes,2003), and recognize scientific practices. By investigating classroom discussions, researchers have shown that Haitian immigrant students’ community practices reflect authentic scientific practices such as acquiring knowledge and searching for scientific meaning (Ballenger,1997; Conant et al.,2001; Rosebery et al.,1992; Warren & Rosebery, 1995). This study also illustrates a more expansive and less culturally biased view that policy makers, researchers, and teachers can use to define what constitutes valid science practices (Hudicourt-Barnes,2003).
4.2 Science Example 2: Recognizing Students’ Strengths in Systemic Thinking and Expanding Science Practices
Considering what counts as science practices, Bang et al. (2012) discuss “settled expectations” (p. 303, citing Harris, 1995) in science and school that determine what are considered appropriate ways of talking, explaining, and understanding phenomena (Medin & Bang, 2014). For example, one biology practice involving categorizing objects and organisms as living versus nonliving fits an approach to science that prioritizes facts to be learned. Such settled expectations in science sepa- rate science from everyday experience, imposing on students what Bang et al. (2012) call the “nature-culture divide” (p. 303), preventing students from engaging with ideas at the boundary between their own experiences and the tenets of science. In line with our recommendation of expanding what counts as STEM practices, Bang et al. (2012) invite readers instead to “imagine the kinds of meaning-making that can arise within a desettling paradigm—that is one focused on…explicitly engaging students…at the nature-culture boundary.” (p. 304).
Categorizing living versus nonliving asks students to use rigid definitions and learn the categories defined by scientists. This approach contrasts with the aims of the NGSS (2013), which include encouraging students to use systemic thinking. One of the cross-cutting concepts of the NGSS that can be applied across disciplines, “sys- tems and system models,” focuses on defining the boundaries of the system under study (National Research Council,2012). Bang et al. (2012) argue that students’
attempts to engage in “thinking at the edges,” also referred to as “possibility think- ing” are often not recognized in classroom activities focused on the more settled work of learning existing categories. They discuss an example reported by Warren and Rosebery (2011) where Jonathan, an African American male student in grade 7 (12 years old) questioned the sun’s place in the category structure of living vs nonliving. Jonathan asked how the sun can be dead if it helps living things to live.
A Euro-American student and the teacher responded that the sun cannot be thought of as a living thing. Jonathan eventually backed off, seemingly resigned that his point was misunderstood and that his view did not fit the system the teacher was using. However, Bang et al. (2012) point out that Jonathan was engaging in systemic thinking about the sun and how it relates to life. They connected Jonathan’s thinking with how microbiologists think “at the edges” about microbial life forms, contesting existing boundaries and pushing the definition of “life” into new territory. Bang et al. (2012) use Helmreich’s (2009) anthropological study of microbiologists’ work to argue that active scientists’ definitions of life are increasingly systemic and that human cultural experience and science are “more entangled than previously thought”
(p. 307). Rather than assuming a deficit in Jonathan’s ideas, this example illustrates how to notice the complexity of this student’s thinking as a strength and recognize how he is engaging in a central science practice.
Bang et al. (2012) consider what desettling activities around nature-culture rela- tions might look like using several classroom-related examples. We focus here on their final example of a design-based study of science learning for an urban indige- nous community. Bang et al. (2012) discuss how in the initial design of this learning environment, the community-based team considered ways that indigenous knowl- edge systems relate to, as well as contrast with, Western science. One focus was the distinction between seeing humans as either “a part of” or “apart from” the natural world. This distinction between psychological distance versus closeness with nature is a theme in work comparing Native American with European American participants from the same rural area in the United States (Medin & Bang,2014). For example, when asked how two animals and/or plants go together (Unsworth et al., 2012), Menominee children as young as 5 years were more likely than Euro-American chil- dren to mention ecological relations, such as linking the two species in the food chain (“the chipmunk would eat the berries”) or mentioning that both have similar biological needs (“both need water to live”). Menominee children also more often justified the pairings using human closeness to nature, such as saying “I eat berries.”
Several other studies show similar examples of closeness to nature and ecological systems in Native American children and adults’ thinking about biological species (Medin & Bang2014). Marin and Bang (2018) reported yet another relational way of thinking about nature. In their investigation of Native American families’ forest
walks, they describe examples of observational practices such as reading land, as “a critical practice forbeingin the world as it enables relationship building with the natural world.” (p. 92).
Noticing the strengths in systemic thinking that Native American youth bring to the classroom, and recognizing that these are, in fact, important science prac- tices, the community-based design team emphasized relations among all things in nature (Bang et al.,2012). In focusing on river ecology, for example, they engaged students with activities in local settings, built on practices students had experienced (e.g., collecting edible and medicinal plants), and highlighted active relationships between organisms and habitats. In one case, they engaged students at an oxbow in a river—a place where changes over geological time can be noticed by reading land. When collecting water samples to assess the health of the river, teachers asked students to immerse themselves, wearing waist-high waders, and walking the river’s earlier path. In contrast to the Western assumption of humans as dominant over nature, they presented humans in deference to plants and habitat (see also Bang et al., 2014). These activities made visible and supported the strengths of Native Amer- ican students as systemic thinkers and provided opportunities for students to engage in science practices such as exploring boundaries, intersections, and dependencies across species.
This example illustrates noticing students’ strengths, recognizing their links to science practices, and expanding the range of what are considered STEM prac- tices. Bang et al. (2012) discuss ways that teachers and curriculum designers can assume students’ strengths rather than deficits, creating opportunities for students to engage with scientific content and in science practices connected to their own lived experiences. Noticing these strengths and recognizing their links to science prac- tices supports students in thinking like scientists by considering the system they are studying within a complex and interrelated context rather than engaging only with pre-differentiated chunks of information to be passively learned. Moving beyond settled definitions thus expands what counts as science practices.